Actually, we DID find Asian women attractive enough to play leading roles in movies.
A STUDY IN SCARLET (1933) comes to mind with Anna May Wong as the female lead (and villainess) of the film.
Phantom of Chinatown (1940) gives us two firsts. Keye Luke as the detective who solves the mystery (James Lee Wong, a role originally played by Boris Karloff) and Lotus Long as his fellow sleuth (she is a Secret Agent working for China) AND as his love interest.

Lee Fong and Madame Poppy? The names were entertainment enough for me. Flatfoot, broad, bird? How can you go wrong? It's interesting that we didn't find Asian women attractive enough to play leading roles in movies. I enjoyed the atmosphere of this movie.

For the actors in this film to say their lines without bursting into laughter must have taken a lot of talent and will power! The key would be that 1931 was a tough Depression year and any job was welcome. Miss Kent always seemed to be having fun even in bottom-of-the-barrel productions.

Delightful example of a very early, barely post silent B movie. The crackling soundtrack, with no music throughout, broadcasts the actors' thundering feet on the stage floors. Long pauses from inept editing, and dated stereotyping add to this look into cinema, and cultural past. A film like this must be viewed for what it is...an archaic look into the history of movies. It is very easy to see the still powerful influence of silent movie styling. Sit back and have a charming ride. One reviewer complained because the romantic interest was not Chinese, but the dialog between her and the hero clearly explains she was raised by her Chinese adoptive father after her parents died in Shanghai when she was a baby.

This one creaks more than my hundred-and-seventy-year-old living room floor. Its attractions are a hokey plot with matching dialog, and performances from the stiff-as-a-board school of acting. An amazingly bad director ties it all together. Yeah, I liked it. If you're in the right frame of mind you'll find enough to laugh at in this undercooked chop suey of a mystery. So add it to the so-bad-it's-good list, ancient archives division, sub-file micro-budget clinkers. FOOTNOTE: Glitches in this marginal print reduce the runtime from 59 to 56 minutes. (You may think this is a blessing.) In any event, the missing 3 minutes don't materially effect the storyline, such as it is. CAST NOTES: You're not likely to recognize the actors - that is with two possible exceptions. A bumbling police detective is played by Billy Gilbert who turned a sneeze into a long and successful Hollywood career. The character Ling Chi is played by the ubiquitous, usually uncredited Willie Fung, who had a career of sorts playing dozens of often nameless Chinese men in more than 125 movies.

Really, it's Below the standards of the time.

No really people
one has to appreciate how the film industry evolved to what it is today.
They where still practically making silent films.
Please, it was 1931
don't compare the storyboard and technique to today's quality.
SIMPLY ENJOY NOSTALGIC

Could be more boring; nah, just joking.
It couldn't.
Could be slower though; well, not really.
Come to think about it, there's nothing I like about this film.

Not only is the lead character not asian she can't even imitate the asian stereotypes of the day.. Plot concerning dagger with jewels inside is elementary dime novel stuff. Could be pre noir, but actually just poor lighting. Even white imperialist saviors are undeveloped. Makes you almost long for Sax Rohmer/ "Many men bite = but Fu Manchu"